Disability Equity and the B-BBEE Scorecard

Posted by Dr Robin Woolley
Sunday, 15 March 2009  |  0 comments
Dr Robin Woolley is a consultant at Transcend Corporate Advisors.
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Various legislation, codes and guidelines have been put in place to encourage the inclusion of people with disabilities in the open labour market. One important aspect of this is your B-BBEE scorecard where disability initiatives contributes potentially over 11 percent to the BB-BEE scorecard. To understand how this could be the case this article uses a scenario to unpack the calculation.

The scenario involves a 10 person manufacturing business with an annual payroll of R10 million and the targets are based on the B-BBEE Codes of Good practice:

Action undertake a general admin learnership with a black woman disability equity candidate – impact:

Learnership target 5% of total permanent employees, adjusted for gender
has a 6 % weighted point impact on the scorecard.

ie 6 % points in this example as 5% of 10 employees is less than one person represented by the learnership.

The target for employment equity is 0.2% of total permanent employees again adjusted for gender, has a 2% weighted point impact. Note that the learnership would count under employment equity as any person that is in continuous contract for longer then 3 months is considered and employee by the department of labour and should be included in your employment equity report.

ie 0.2% of 10 people is far less than 1 person hence full 2%

Skills development spend on people with disabilities has a target of 0.3% of payroll, adjusted for gender, with a 3% point impact and as the spend on a learnership including the living stipend paid to the learner is likely to be around R 80 000 for the year, this is easily exceeds the target of R30 000 in this case,

i.e. 0.3% of R10 million is R30 000 and we have a full 3% point impact

General skills development spend on the learnership also contributes to the general skills development target of 3% of payroll having a 6 % weighted point impact, again adjusting for gender.
In this case with a small payroll there is potentially R80 000 / R300 000 of 6 points impact or 1,6%.

Hence in the case quoted the one learner has a 12,6% impact on the companies scorecard.

Note that the adjustment for gender is a calculation that encourages black woman participation such that you would want equal representation of men and woman in the above calculation in order to not weaken the end result, alternatively your result is proportioned by your actual gender ratio.

The Link between Diversity and Transformation

The strong impact on the scorecard is good and well, but we need to understand why B-BBEE has such a strong focus on disability equity.

Creating an inclusive society often requires a change in the way in which things are usually done, and this can be in terms of business practice, as well as core values, processes and standards. Change is not only quantitative on the scorecard but qualitative in the companies ability to embrace and harvest diversity.

Within a company’s workplace the created cultures are those to which all employees belong and adhere to similar human rights objectives. A company’s demographics being representative of the population gives the message that it does not discriminate, and seeks to understand its customer.

The term diversity can be defined as all the ways in which we are different. The South African constitution defines South African society as one that embraces the many differences between its people that include race, gender, sex, ethnic or social origin, culture and language. Hence disability is just another way in which we are different, and so it is correctly identified as a key factor in the B-BBEE scorecard.

For additional information

You are welcome to email Robin Woolley or call 011 442 2433.
 

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